Short pulses with well-controlled widths find wide spread applications in the electronic industry. For instance, it is used in clocking circuits, in triggering circuits, and the like. Because of its importance, many integrated circuits (IC's) have been designed to generate them. Short pulses generated by IC's in the prior art are typically generated using external capacitors. This method has the disadvantage of complexity and added costs. For IC's to generate short pulses without using capacitors, the IC's typically digitally generate them with combination gates, usually in regenerative loops. This method, however, has the disadvantage of requiring large IC areas to implement the pulse circuit. This is a distinct disadvantage in high frequency applications, because large IC areas tend to have more stray capacitance to degrade high frequency propagations.
A circuit in accordance with the preferred embodiment of the present invention generates short pulses without the disadvantages of these two prior art methods. The short pulse generated by the circuit in accordance with the present invention is short compared to the period of the operating frequency; therefore it can be used in such circuits as phase-lock loops and sample-and-hold circuits. The circuit utilizes propagation delay through the circuit elements to determine the width of the pulse. In this manner, the circuit does not need to rely on external timing capacitors or a regenerative gating scheme to generate a pulse. The pulse thus generated is simple and is ideal for use in high frequency circuits.